Death Watch (47 page)

“What do you think you are doing?” he said, nearly vomiting the words into Silas’s face.

Coldly, flatly, though no less shaken, Silas answered, “I think we both know this is not about what
I’m
doing. It’s about what
you’re
doing.”

“Oh? Silas”—Uncle coughed, still catching his breath—“pray tell, just what am I doing? What is it you think I am doing?”

“There’s no need to become hysterical.” Silas relished seeing his uncle’s usual crisp composure wrecked. “But you have done something horrible.” Then, pausing between each word, he added, “We both know it. You have committed
unimaginable
acts.” In a way, Silas was bluffing. His mind was still reeling from what he’d heard, trying to sort out what it meant, what it might mean. But he could see he had his uncle on the run and so kept on at him, unwilling to let him regain his composure, hoping agitation would lead to revelation.

“We both know you are hiding something,
keeping
something in this room. Keeping
him
!”

Uncle opened his mouth and tried to speak, but no words came. Jumping into the pause, Silas began to scream at him.

“You are a murderer! I am going to the police, and you are going to prison
for murder
!” The words flew out of him. Even as he spat them, he knew he had no evidence, only suspicion and intuition. He didn’t actually know whether he was right or not, whether the room held anything more than hidden relics of his uncle’s sick,
lonely life, but his gut told him that Uncle knew something about his dad, and Silas wanted to hear him say so, or at least see if he could hear the lies working under his uncle’s words. “Murderer. Murderer,” Silas intoned slow as a spell. “You killed him, didn’t you? You always wanted my mother for yourself, so you put my dad out of the picture, right? C’mon, let’s go in there together, and you can show me what you’re hiding.” His bravery rose out of his wild anger, for if he’d stopped to think about it, it was more than likely that if the room did hold his father’s corpse, Silas would almost certainly find his own death waiting there for him.

All the red ran out of Uncle’s face and he stood there, skin white as the handkerchief in his pocket. He slowly took a breath, trying to compose himself. “Silas, this room belongs to my son. It was his room before he went away”—he coughed—“to school. Before that, it was my studio. It is now, again, my private work-room. The things in it are private. My
private
things. Things of interest only to me, and of course, a few things of my son’s, which I know he would not want disturbed.”

“You
smell
guilty, you know. Open the door. Just for one second. Open the door and let me see something that might convince me you’re not a monster.”

“Oh, Silas,” Uncle said, breathing so shallowly now that Silas thought he might faint, “I don’t think there is anything I could show you or tell you that would convince you I wasn’t.” Uncle ran his hands down the lapels of his jacket. “And I don’t like this game. I will not rise to it. You have set your mind against me despite my only wanting the best for you and your mother.”

“You know you want to show me, to be free of whatever you’re hiding in there, murderer,” Silas taunted him again, and then said, sarcastically, “Where’s your humanity?”

“Oh,” Uncle said quietly, almost to himself, “somewhere
neither you nor anyone, no, not even I, will ever find it.” He was gazing at the floor absently, but then looked up and met Silas’s stare with focus, as if he was remembering something. His hands began to tremble, but he continued with increasing calm. “Of course, Silas, if you think so little of me, perhaps you should leave. Leave this house now and don’t return until you learn a little gratitude. At such a time, when you are ready to become a part of this family, come back. And then I will gladly give you the key to every room in the house.” Uncle brushed the hair back out of his eyes. “But until such a time as you abandon these morbid fantasies and regain your composure and your respect, leave this house, Silas. Go!” This last word wiped the self-assured smugness from Silas’s face.

At the word “go,” the locked door shuddered and vibrated sharply and briefly on its sturdy hinges. The dust began flowing again back and forth, back and forth under the door, like the breathing of a frightened animal, and the pounding started again just beyond the door. Silas’s eyes went wide. In the same moment his uncle’s knees went out from under him and he fell to a kneeling position on the floor murmuring, “Squirrels … they get inside the walls.”
Sure they do
, thought Silas in disbelief.
Someone’s in that damn room
. He pulled frantically at the door handle, though he could feel that the locks were too strong for him. He brought both fists down hard on the wood, sending a hollow booming sound through the room on the other side. The pounding stopped. Silence.

“Dad?” Silas yelled, and again, “Dad?”

From the basement to the dome the whole house was still. The only sound Silas could hear was his uncle’s soft crying.

Uncle coughed, then spat out, “Your father is not in this house.” He said it with such directness, such matter-of-factness,
that while the words held briefly on the air, Silas was almost convinced. But then, unable to release his suspicions, he bent down and snarled into his uncle’s ear, “You are a monster. And. I. Don’t. Believe. You.”

Silas left his uncle’s house without another word, walking past the entrance to the front parlor where his mother still sat, not moving, just staring into space. Part of him wanted to go to her, hug her, tell her he was sorry for everything that disappointed and hurt her, to take it all on himself and off of her. He wanted to carry her out the front door with him, just get her out of that house where everything bad was made worse. But he knew she wouldn’t go. Silas knew she was there because some part of her wanted to be there, among the good furniture and the polished floors and the brother with money. So he walked out the door and slammed it behind him. He crossed the street and stood in the shadows of the trees. Back at Uncle’s house, a light went on in a room in one of the upper attics. His uncle, he guessed, going back to work. What was up there? What was Uncle covering up now? Maybe not his dad, he thought as his mind cooled, but
something
.

And then downstairs, there was his mother, so close to whatever his uncle was keeping behind all those locks. Three times Silas started to turn to go home, but when he stopped himself the third time, he went back to Uncle’s. He climbed the stairs of the empty porch, lit only by the dim light falling out from the parlor window. Before he knew what he was doing or why, he was moving quietly along the wall until he was standing in front of the parlor window. His pressed his right hand against the cold stone of the house and leaned toward the glass. His left hand was in his coat pocket and the watch was in his hand, his thumb
raising and lowering the hinged jaw that covered the watch’s dial. Looking in, he could see his mother hadn’t left her chair, but her shoulders were shaking now and she was holding her face in her hands.

The light inside the house made the window into a mirror, and Silas had to look through his own face to see his mother. She sat inside his reflection, crying alone in an empty room. He didn’t want to feel anything, looking at her, but it felt like there was a stone sitting at the bottom of his stomach. He could see his eyes, reflected in the glass, watching her, and couldn’t decide which of the two of them he hated more; her for just sitting there, or himself for leaving her in that house. And then, wondering, he pressed his thumbs against the death watch’s ticking hand, stopping the mechanism. He was still looking through the window, but now the light in the room seemed to slant, and figures began to form around his mother, shapes of faded lace and long gowns sewn from shadows, filling the room, leaning in toward her, all of them mimicking her racking sobs in silent pantomime. Most of the faces were blurred, as if streaked with water, rivulets of mourning that flowed in streams down their faces and over their forms. The figures closest to his mother were more distinct, and more familiar. An older woman in a mourning dress with his mother’s features reminded Silas of a photo of his grandmother. And next to her, a woman with a similar face, though older, clearly distilled from the same lineage. Maybe many of these spirits were relatives, female relations from his mother’s family stretching back who knew how far. Or perhaps these were the Umber women, still bound to the house where they spent their days and nights, quietly ignoring their husbands’ strange business, attending only to their private daily griefs.

One of the figures closer to the window and the corner of
the room lacked hands, and the blurred and rounded ends of her arms raised to her face could not stop her tears.

In the middle of the crowd of spirits that wound about her, Silas saw his mother—as through a thin curtain—wipe the last tears from her eyes and begin to compose herself. As she did, the surrounding cloud of gray mourning women began to unweave itself from the room and fall away from her.

Silas could feel his heavy guilt becoming mixed with something else. Was it comfort? Were these women watching over his mother while she remained in this house? What strange and ancient ritual was he watching where, in grief, kin surrounded her, drawn to her by her tears?
Does mourning bring us closer to the dead?
Silas wondered.
It must be so
, he concluded,
that even when we can’t see beyond our own grief, we come close to their prison houses
. Drawing his hands from his pockets and letting the clock continue ticking, Silas walked through the front door and went to his mother’s side, filled with resolve.

“Let me take you out of here,” he whispered.

His mother swept his hand absently from her shoulder.

“Mom, let me just take you for a walk outside somewhere. You can show me the part of town where you grew up. We can talk. Please.”

She looked up with anger twisting her face into a snarl. “You keep out of those damn houses, Silas! You hear me? We left for a reason. Your damn father went in ’em, oh, I
know
that he did. Just to gall me. Well, you stay the hell out of them!”

“Mom,” Silas said, trying to calm her, “it’s okay. I know what’s in—” But his words were interrupted by a slow, steady bell ringing over the town.

Raising her head slightly, her eyes still closed, Dolores said through her clenched teeth, “Passing Bell. That’ll be for you.”

And it shall come to pass that the soul shalle leave behind its earthly habitations. How long the soule shall remaine neer the corpse varieth accordinge to the nature of the deceased and whether or no the spirit be bound in somewise to a vessel or to some especial chambyre or place. Even so, if it be not so bound, before the spirit goeth forth upon the Road of Mystes, or Lyche Waye, it may wander for a time among its accustomed places and among those persons who once were and remaineth its kin. If then the soul riseth up and appeareth in pleasinge form in the companye of others, this shall be knowne as the Wake, or Wakygne, and during that time, the spirit may disclose very manie things, in speeche or carefulle gesture, to the living. It shall be accordinge to the Undertaker in what manner the soul shalle be Waked, whether through invitation or command, and whether or no
the Waters of Lethe shall be administered to the ghost freely, or under compulsion, or not at alle. In anywise, the Wake provideth a moste rare moment wherein all earthly matters of concerne to the spirit or its living relatives may be rendered resolved and brought to their moste righfulle and peaceable conclusion. Gaudeamus igitur.

—From
The Book of Cerements

S
ILAS WALKED HOME SLOWLY
from Temple Street. All across Lichport, coming up from the Narrows, the bell rang out its doleful song through the air:
Death, death, death comes
… The slow, deep sound was a stark contrast to his own racing thoughts. Silas could almost hear his name in the bell’s ringing, calling him to a task he knew next to nothing about. His mother had called it a “Passing Bell.” He knew what that was from the ledger, and he knew that what followed the Passing Bell was an important part of the Undertaker’s work. But that was his father’s job, not his. Yet with every ring, he could hear the town’s wish, their unspoken expectation that no matter what had happened to Amos, Silas would step in to fill his father’s shoes.

He arrived home and hesitantly walked up the steps of the porch. Mrs. Bowe was sitting in his study, brushing her long hair slowly in time with the bell. For the first time since Silas’s arrival, she wore it down. He could see that Mrs. Bowe was lost in her thoughts, and that she was clearly waiting for him. Silas had begun to clear his throat to get her attention when suddenly, the bell stopped ringing.

“God bless the coming and going of all his children,” said Mrs. Bowe very softly, looking up, becoming increasingly focused. “Now, we wait. Silas, will you take some tea, or a shot of something to calm you? You should have a little bite to eat, some cheese. I
think I have some cold roast beef, shall I make you a sandwich? It will likely be a very long couple of nights.” She was speaking as though the two of them had this conversation every day, and her calm was only making him more nervous.